PHACS Puerto Rico Hurricane Relief

Photo: Staff at San Juan City Hospital with a supply backpack

***UPDATE 11/13/2017: The Amazon registry is still open! All items will ship directly to one of our clinics in Puerto Rico, and the highest priority items are mosquito nets and mosquito repellant. CLICK HERE TO DONATE VIA THE REGISTRY and please continue to share and post in your networks!

***UPDATE 11/7/2017: We've received confirmation that JetBlue was able to ship all items over two consecutive days, Sunday 11/5 and Monday 11/6. Staff from our clinics were able to collect all shipped items from the airport on Monday and can start distributing them to families immediately. Many thanks to JetBlue for the gift of shipping these items!

***UPDATE 11/2/2017: Today, the Harvard team loaded about 2,600 pounds and 94 boxes worth of supplies into a U-haul truck and delivered it all to JetBlue's cargo facility at Boston Logan airport! The supplies will fly on the daily direct flight to San Juan starting on Friday, Nov. 3rd, and our clinics will be able to pick everything up directly from the airport. We're so grateful to JetBlue for their generosity in delivering these supplies to our PHACS families, and to our PHACS community for donating nearly 1,900 items so far! Scroll down this page to see pictures from the assembly and delivery of the backpacks.

***UPDATE 10/30/2017: We are excited to announce that through a collaboration with Massachusetts General Hospital and JetBlue, we will be able to send the roughly 1800 donations we have received so far as cargo on JetBlue flights to San Juan this week! We'll be posting pictures of our staff assembling and packing the backpack supply kits, so check back for those. We are so grateful for the support of MGH and JetBlue in getting these supplies quickly and reliably to our PHACS families in Puerto Rico! Please note that the registry will remain open, but all items will now be shipped directly to our clinic at the University of Puerto Rico in San Juan - they are still in particular need of mosquito nets and bug spray.

***UPDATE 10/26/2017: Thank you for the overwhelming support for our colleagues and families in Puerto Rico - in addition to the 80 backpacks that Drs. Yogev and Chadwick and their staff have prepared at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, nearly 1,500 items have been donated and shipped to our Harvard offices via our Amazon registry!

SUPPORT PHACS FAMILIES AFFECTED BY HURRICANE MARIA

Photo: A car full the brim with supply backpacks

On September 20th, 2017, Hurricane Maria (a Category 5 storm) hit Puerto Rico with devastating force and left residents without reliable access to water, food, electricity, and many other necessities. The provision of critically needed aid has been extremely slow and, in some places, practically non-existent. Many residents are still struggling to meet their basic needs more than three weeks later – with the poorest and most vulnerable particularly affected. The situation is dire.

They have reached out to us with an urgent request for basic supplies for the families they work with and for their staff – please scroll down to read their email, including a list of the most critical items they identified. We would like to respond to this request and are asking for your support in that effort.

We have created an Amazon registry to allow for the purchase of the requested items. If you can buy even one item off of the registry to support a family in Puerto Rico, please do so. Please choose the fastest shipping method you can afford so that we can get these supply kits on their way as quickly as possible.

Photo: Staff at Harvard about to depart for Boston Logan Airport with supply kits

The following is the email request received from our colleagues in Puerto Rico.

Greetings from Puerto Rico!

We hope this message finds you well. Puerto Rico, on the other hand, faced a Category 5 Hurricane two weeks ago. The situation has not been stable yet, regarding our everyday lives. However, this site has not reported any major losses and its staff is safe and sound. The same can not be said of our participants, most of them becoming from low-income households. They are striving to find essentials and basic services for their families subsistence in the middle of this humanitarian crisis. Basic needs regarding food, transportation, water and electricity, are scarce until further notice, which creates long hour lines to access almost anything for everyone.

Many federal and health organizations, have been posting messages on their willingness to cooperate with our population to get through the coming weeks. As the Outreach Coordinator for the San Juan City Hospital Research Unit, with Dr. Midnela Acevedo, as our Director, we desperately ask if PHACS can help us through FEDEX with some or all the following products, to distribute to our staff and participants.

We plan to arrange any of the help we can receive in “Support Kits”. To facilitate the carrying of products, we thought kits should be distributed in waterproof backpacks, due to the loss of roof tops of many homes situated in this tropical always raining Island. Here, I enlist the essentials.

Support Kit Backpacks, containing:

Solar panel charger for USBs

Phone Battery chargers with USB and a wall charger

Inverter power units for cars (for staff)

Portable water filter bag

Feminine hygiene products (such as tampons, sanitary napkins)

Mosquito repellent

Sunblock

Sleeping bag

Baby wipes

AM/FM radio that can be recharged with USB port

Hand sanitizer

First aid kit

Plastic gloves

Disinfecting wipes

Flashlight or lamp (preferably solar or charged with USB)

D batteries

AA batteries

Hat to protect from sun

Toilet paper

Photo: Some of the Harvard team after delivering the U-haul full of supplies to JetBlue

Any additional snacks that we can provide for participants upon their site arrival, will also be appreciated since most of them have not eaten properly for the past days. At our site, we have cold water for them. If we can accompany that with snack it will be a most welcome relief for them, their spouses and children.

Our team has been without electricity and water in their household for three weeks now. Once again, any help with these will be eternally thanked. And please feel free to share to whomever can help us with this matter.

Please let us now, if we can be of any further assistance regarding the materials needed.